“After the character finishes her thought, the author is describing a separate action, other than speaking. Aperiod is a deliberate choice.” I look up at the old man. “To change the pace.”

“Excellent,” he says. “But what about the third line?”

I look at the book again. “It could have been written without any break. ‘Thank you for cutting my hair.'”

“Perhaps.”

“But that period suggests the bit about the hair is an afterthought,” I say, shifting so the firelight falls more fully on the pages. “The reader is supposed to notice the narrator changed the subject to hide her feelings.”

“The narrator intersperses dialogue tags with descriptions of actions. She lets us know that instead of saying what she’s thinking, she smiles. Her brother is smiling too, and his dialogue trails off. We don’t know what he’s thinking, but we can tell the narrator senses something’s wrong, because she bites her lip.”

The old man pours himself a cup of tea. “Why doesn’t the author just come right out and say, ‘Hey everyone, here’s an important plot point!’?”

“What do you mean?” I say, my brows furrowing in confusion.

“Hold on,” says the old man. “What just happened?”

“Er…. I frowned. Because I was confused. Why are you glaring at me?”

“I already knew you were confused, because you said ‘What do you mean?’ Would a reader need a description of my face, now that you’ve mentioned that I’m glaring at you?”

“No, that would be redundant. They’d probably be more interested in how you suddenly started talking as if you knew how an author is writing your scene. That would distract from the story.”

“You’re right,” he says with a dry laugh. “But you did the same thing when you described the look on your face. Narrators shouldn’t convey emotion by describing their own facial expressions.“

“But right there in Divergent, it says: ‘I smile.’ It also says Tris is chewing her lip. Why does Veronica Roth’s narrator get to describe her own facial expressions?”

The old man leans forward. “As a first-person narrator, you could report that you choose to smile, or that you feel yourself biting your lip. But your narrator can’t watch a camera that is zoomed in on her own face, so as author you can’t have your narrator report subtle visual details, such as the color rising in her cheeks, or the way her nose crinkles adorably when she gets frustrated.”

“I think you’ve made your point,” I say, feeling my face heat up. “So, a first-person narrator can mention a deliberate action like mopping her brow, or she can quote dialogue that includes a stammer, but she can’t describe the beads of sweat glistening on her forehead or come up with a poetic simile for how her lower lip looks as it trembles.”

“Right. And she can quote herself saying something clever, but someone else has to mention the spark of intelligence flashing in her deep brown eyes. Stepping out of a first-person narrator’s head to describe a movie-style close-up breaks the author’s contract with the reader.”

“Okay.” I let out a long breath. “I can see that learning all these conventions is important.”

“That I’ve got a better handle on how punctuation signals pacing in dialogue.”

I start flipping pages, scanning whatever dialogue catches my eye. “Commas indicate the slightest pause, a period indicates a full stop between complete thoughts, and three dots suggests the speaker is trailing off before finishing a thought.”

“And if you wanted to indicate an interruption–“

“Here’s one, on page 22!”

She clears her throat and continues. “Your intelligent response to the dog indicates strong alignment with the Erudite. I have no idea what to make of your indecision in stage one, but–“

“Wait,” I interrupt her. “So you have no idea what my aptitude is?”

“The author probably didn’t need to say ‘I interrupt her,’ because the dash already signals a break,” I say. “Hmm. I notice that this dash is not just a single minus sign, like a hyphen.”

“Correct. Some word processors will auto-correct two hyphens to make a dash–but the shorter hyphen and the longer dash serve different purposes. Hyphens join; dashes separate. Writing ‘auto–correct’ or ‘dash-but’ would change the meaning.”

“I think I understand,” I say.

Smiling, the old man fills another teacup, and offers it to me.

Cradling the cup in one hand, I start unlacing my boots, staring into the fire. “I never realized how much careful planning goes into crafting dialogue.”

The old man nods. “Punctuating dialogue properly is important, but actions speak loudly, too. When I offered you tea, and you unlaced your boots at my hearth, we didn’t need any words stating that there was a comfortable lull in our conversation. The careful placement of details created a little pause. It was a good example of showing rather than telling.”

Outside, the wind howls. The old man puts another log on the fire. I sip my tea, feeling it warm my insides.

“Thank you.” I say. “For sharing your hermitage on such a stormy night.”

“And…?”

“For teaching me how punctuation and actions work together in dialogue.“

I found this piece very enlightning as I have found my punctuation very suspect and has been commented about whilst I have been submitting course work ona a writing course. I have other faults but punctuation is probably my main problem along with my writing too fast and not reviewing my piece correctly. Any advice is totally welcome. Thanks again for the writing pointers you share with us.

I hope you can give me advice about a fiction story that I’m writing. I have to write it in narrator’s point of view. I have a part of the story written, it’s about a blind date the character the man thinks he has a lot in common with the character female. But the woman thinks he’s a creep. I can’t seem to think of a catchy dialogue to continue, so it’s sort of a struggle to write on. I know it’s all about using your imagination, but somehow I’m not getting to a point to make this happen. This paragraph (4) is what I have to continue, but I can’t seem to make it happen between the characters.

“Hi, you must be Anthony?” Erin said, while their eyes met, she closed her purse. Anthony nodded somewhat surprised, he replied, “yeah….. and you must be Erin? Erin smiled, while she stuck out her hand, Anthony shook her hand. “Yeah…she nodded, I saw you sitting here at the booth, nice to meet you.” Erin said. “Nice to meet you too, please take a seat,” he gestured, Erin took a seat across from him, while she hung her coat over the seat, and tucked her purse beside her chair on the floor.

The way you presented this was done extremely well. I can already sense the piece of writing above is something which will forever change the way in which I think about anything I write, not just dialogue. I have long hoped to put together a piece of writing, though this is the first research I’ve ever done on how to even make a start on making a start, and to stumble onto something as excellent as this as my first exposure really makes me feel optimistic about finally putting something together. Likely to be one of the all-time classics of the future, and I will make a point of making a special mention to you when that day comes.

just like in my class in barn burning (in the store in which the justice of the piece sat) everyone thought it was in a court. bt its actually in a store. thing is in plain sight when we are looking hard to find the setting.